Airbus Group SE, Europe’s biggest planemaker, boasted for weeks that it planned the first ever flight of an electric-powered aircraft across the Channel between England and France. While Airbus talked, Hugues Duval acted. Airbus’s two-seat e-Fan made the same flight Friday morning.

German industrial company Siemens AG (SIEGn.DE) has not seen an easing in pricing pressures in the gas-fired turbine market, the head of the company's energy business said on Thursday. "If you look at the overall market for gas turbines, especially the large gas turbines, there's more capacity to produce than there is demand," the Houston-based executive said. Siemens signed an 8 billion euro ($8.8 billion) deal to supply gas and wind power plants to Egypt in June, boosting a division which is struggling at home.

Siemens AG, Europe's largest engineering company, needs to secure more service contracts in the fourth quarter to reach its full-year profit margin goal at the industrial operations, according to a person familiar with the matter. A Siemens spokesman declined to comment. The German engineering company said in May it will cut another 4,500 jobs after second-quarter profit fell more than analysts estimated, burdened by the declining oil price.